Digicult presents:
NECESSITY OR TABOO
HOW TO EVALUATE ART & SCIENCE PROJECTS?
Txt: Silvia Casini
Complete article:
http://www.digicult.it/digimag/article.asp?id=1953
Digimag 60 - January 2011
http://www.digicult.it/digimag_eng/
Scientists and communicators are more and more persuaded that divulgating
science to the public and involving outsiders into it is a duty rather than
a choice. In order to make science is necessary to use a various range of
tools: from a pen and a sheet where to draw sketches, write notes and create
mental maps, to the utilization of the most advanced technology. The
sciences that more evidently and more closely concern the human body, such
as genomics and neurosciences, are searching for more effective ways to
communicate and involve people.
Art entered the scientific field many years before scientists and artists
became aware of it: the focus on the perceptive and aesthetic-functional
aspects has always been a part of scientific experimentation and research,
sensitive to representative procedures utilizing images rather that words.
Many science museums before, and science centres later, like San Francisco
Exploratorium, Dublin Science Gallery and Paris Laboratoire bet on the union
between art, science and technology. Design played a key role in the
modernization of science museums, that were looking for a more and more
advanced, user-friendly and absorbing interaction with the public.
However, art stayed out of it. Art museums remained completely different
from science museums and science centres, most of all because people went to
the science museum with the purpose of learning something. In Italy a
certain snobbery towards the terms "didactic" and "educational" reigned
supreme. Now it seems the situation has reversed though: art, even
contemporary one, can be and must be not only explained, but approached and
treated like an ordinary aspect of everyday life. The educational function
of art is a taboo no more: children get closer to art through a great number
of didactic laboratories, direct experiences, meeting with artists, thematic
paths. The magic formula "hands on" that radically changed the planning and
the setting up in science museums seems to go well with art and design.
The collaborations between artists and scientists are always very useful
occasions indeed, and keep on giving good results. These people work side by
side in the attempt of visualizing invisible-to-the-eye phenomena and
analyzing and using the properties of matter. Thanks to art-science
projects, artists can reach sophisticated instrumentations otherwise
forbidden outside the laboratory, while scientists have the chance to
analyze the studied object through new visualization procedures that take
advantage from the artist's intervention: when observed through the use of
different techniques, some objects seem to become more visible and reveal
new properties. Moreover, in this way the artists who care for science and
technology often ask themselves about ethical, cultural and social
questions, while the scientists rely on new communicative ways to show the
outcomes of their researches and earn the public's assent.
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Complete article:
http://www.digicult.it/digimag/article.asp?id=1953
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